Yurei

Devlog

• Yurei is Coming to Steam Tomorrow!
  June 17, 2025 by Bright Flask#samurai, #top-down, #action, #japan, #arcade, #hack and slash

  I’m happy to announce that my game Yurei will be launching on Steam tomorrow ! Yurei is a top-down action game centered around dashing to hit your enemies. You play as a ghost of a samurai that was... Continue reading

  
• Getting Back Up (Devlog #51)
  May 03, 2025 by Bright Flask

  1

  #samurai, #japanese, #japan, #top-down

  Korean and Swedish Translations For the past few months, I have been talking with a lovely person I met on Reddit (of all places). She had seen a post I made about the game and wanted to contribute. S... Continue reading

  
• Game Optimization & Intro Cutscene with VO! (Devlog #50)
  February 02, 2025 by Bright Flask#unity, #samurai, #japan, #top-down

  Optimized Build Size One thing that had been on the back burner for a while was the build size. I noticed a couple of months ago when testing on Steam that the build was over 1 GB. That sounded way to... Continue reading

  
• Cutscene Glow Up & Playtesting Like Crazy! (Devlog #49)
  January 11, 2025 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #top down, #action, #edo japan, #japan

  Playtesting, playtesting, and more playtesting! December was the month of playtesting. It's not like I wasn't doing it before. But I wanted to go through the whole game again and test Steam achievemen... Continue reading

  
• Art Finalized and Controller Support! (Devlog #48)
  December 08, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #japan, #2d

  Art Finalized It feels bizarre to say it out loud. I still remember a couple of days ago when I replied to the artist's email and it felt odd writing "I guess this it...?". After more than a year of e... Continue reading

  
• Upgrades UI and new VFXs! (Devlog #47)
  November 04, 2024 by Bright Flask#action, #japan, #samurai, #top-down

  Final Upgrades UI For a long time, my upgrades shop (called gear, in the game) was set as a list of things to buy. Then it hit me that it made no sense to be like that since each item represents diffe... Continue reading

  
• Final Visual Style and Portuguese Translation! (Devlog #46)
  October 12, 2024 by Bright Flask#samurai, #japan, #top-down, #action, #localization, #ui, #visuals

  New UI Visuals I've been working with an artist to update the entire UI of my game. After giving him some references, the first version he came up with was pretty spot on. The suggestion I made was th... Continue reading

  
• Steam Achievements Are In! (Devlog #45)
  September 08, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #japan, #japanese, #hack and slash, #solo developer, #solo development, #unity

  Final Stage Visuals At the end of the last month, I managed to get the decorative assets for the Castle and Cave areas. It took some iteration but I managed to get decorative assets that I could use t... Continue reading

  
• Ending Cutscene and Decorating Levels! (Devlog#44)
  August 11, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #ghost, #top-down, #action, #slasher, #fast, #souls-like

  Ending Cutscene With the game coming to a close I finally got around to producing the final cutscene. Similar to how I did the opening cutscene, it's all done inside Unity with the Animator. It proved... Continue reading

  
• Golden Path Playable and Multiple Save Files (Devlog#43)
  July 07, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #japanese, #action, #top-down, #game design

  Multiple File Select I finished implementing the LAST thing I decided to implement. For a long time, I had thought about adding multiple save files. I knew it was going to be a bit of work. The whole... Continue reading

  
• It's Never Too Late to Change Major Systems! (Except Sometimes) Devlog#42
  June 16, 2024 by Bright Flask

  1

  #samurai, #japan, #combat, #top-down, #unity

  DEMO I have already been making DEMO versions for a while. I feel like the game has reached a point where I can have an “official” one. The game plays exactly the same. The only difference is that... Continue reading

  
• Yurei DEMO Out!
  June 01, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #demo, #japan, #japanese, #combat

  Yurei's DEMO is out! - Play through the first 6 stages of the game - Buy gear to improve your stats - Equip different amulets to change your playstyle - Pray to a Fortune God to increase the difficult... Continue reading

  
• Insanely Small But Awesome New Visuals + Playtesting in the House (Devlog #41)
  May 05, 2024 by Bright Flask#samurai, #unity, #japan, #ninja

  Updated Visuals Tutorial Videos For most of the tutorials in the game, I have a video that shows info about the action. Since the game visuals have changed in the last couple of months, it only made s... Continue reading

  
• Stage Designer Tool and Castle Stages Improved (Devlog #40)
  April 07, 2024 by Bright Flask#samurai, #japan, #solodeveloper, #solo-dev, #unity, #game design

  This past month, I focused on the third and final area of the game, the castle area. Having done the Forest area the month before and the Cave area the month before that, helped me plan for the Castle... Continue reading

  
• Overhauled Forest Area and Refining Boss Behavior (Devlog #39)
  March 03, 2024 by Bright Flask#yurei, #japanese, #samurai, #edo japan, #solo dev, #unity, #made with unity

  Forest Stages to L2 For February, I decided to switch my development process. Now, each month will end with me delivering a milestone. For February, the milestone was getting all 13 forest stages to L... Continue reading

  
• I wish I organized myself like this before...! (Devlog #38)
  February 11, 2024 by Bright Flask#solo-developer, #solodeveloper, #unity, #madewithunity, #yurei, #samurai, #japan

  January was important for me. I started by deciding to not participate in the Steam Nest Fest in February. From what I read, it was better to participate in Next Fest near the release of the game. My... Continue reading

  
• Devlog#37 - Reminiscing 2023
  January 20, 2024 by Bright Flask#samurai, #action, #top-down, #slasher, #japan

  With 2024 starting, it's time to look back at 2023. The year had some bumps along the road. I had COVID (twice) and had to travel for work. However, I managed to maintain a good pace working on Yurei... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #36 - Steam Wishlist Trailer, All bugs squashed, Database Reworked!
  December 04, 2023 by Bright Flask#unity, #samurai, #solo dev, #game development, #code, #programming, #steam, #wishlist, #japan

  Lately, it has been hard to keep myself motivated. I think it's because the project is near completion. I have to get into this "closing" mindset, and it is hard. More than anything now, I want to get... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #35 - Steam Page Launches!
  November 05, 2023 by Bright Flask#slasher, #top-down, #arena, #samurai

  Steam Page I finally got around to setting up my Steam page. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about creating the page. I guess it all feels too real. I plan on participating in Steam Next Fest in Feb... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #34 - All Cave Stages Balanced, New Popups, and New Player Facing Indicator
  October 06, 2023 by Bright Flask#indie, #top-down, #samurai, #japan, #action, #survival, #horde, #horde mode

  All Cave Stages Balanced This month, I focused on getting all 13 cave stages to a higher quality. I went through each stage and changed the layout, enemy count, and camera constraints. It was a lot of... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #33 Constraining the camera, Milestone approach, and Textmesh Pro! Plus, Alucard?
  September 03, 2023 by Bright Flask#indie, #gamedev, #samurai, #japan, #sengoku jidai, #action, #top-down

  This Devlog covers the months of July and August 2023. Constraining the Camera I finally got around to adding an option to constrain the camera per stage. I hesitated because I wanted to keep things s... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #32 - Cutscenes and All Audio Hooked Up!
  July 08, 2023 by Bright Flask#indie, #2d, #samurai, #japan, #top-down, #topdown, #action

  Cutscene System For quite some time, I have been wondering how the game was going to end. And actually how it was going to start. I was okay with it starting with just a dialogue to do some exposition... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #31 - Localizing Strings and Improving Stages
  June 04, 2023 by Bright Flask#indie-dev, #samurai, #top-down, #action, #japan, #indie, #ninja

  Converting Hardcoded Strings to Localized Ones I started the month with the goal to get all the strings in the game to come from the localization system. I created a list of all the screens present in... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #30 - New Dash Attacks and First Publishers Submission
  May 08, 2023 by Bright Flask#samurai, #japan, #action, #top-down

  New Dash Attacks I've wanted to incorporate two new dash attacks for a while now: the chain dash and the perfect charge dash. With the chain dash, players will have a limited timeframe to execute an a... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #29 - New boss animations and Reworked UI
  April 10, 2023 by Bright Flask#2d, #action game, #combat, #samurai, #indie, #japan

  Reworked UI The big goal for March was to rework the UI. I wanted to go through all the screens and make them more consistent. The plan was to make the layout and behavior final while making the visua... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #28 - First Festival Submission and ingame debugger
  March 10, 2023 by Bright Flask#samurai, #unity, #action, #top-down

  First Festival Submission The Big Festival is the most significant games festival in Brazil. Over the years, I've loosely followed it. I wasn't planning on sending the game to the festival. I thought... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #27 - A look back at 2022
  February 12, 2023 by Bright Flask#unity, #samurai, #unity 3d, #action game, #combat, #fsm, #localization

  I recently took some time to look at all that I had done in 2022 on Yurei. I was surprised by how much and how impactful the changes were. Here are some of the highlights. Reworking my FSM (Example of... Continue reading

  
• Devlog#26 - Dialogue System, Achievements, and Bloodstone Stages
  January 21, 2023 by Bright Flask#samurai, #action, #rpg, #top-down, #japan

  This devlog covers the last three months of development of Yurei from October 2022 to January 2023. Dialogue System I knew I wanted to tell a story in the game to motivate the player. I kept pushing i... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #25 - New Boss Attacks, Translation System Revamped and More!
  October 09, 2022 by Bright Flask#2d, #action game, #blood, #combat, #samurai

  Changing Jobs For the past year or so, I've been tracking the amount of time I put into the project. For some perspective, in March 2022 I put in 5 hours, while in February I put in 44 hours. The reas... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #24 - v0.17 - New Art, 2D Lights and Animator FSM
  March 05, 2022 by Bright Flask#samurai, #unity, #action

  This month was tough for me. There were some changes to my day job. Suffice it to say that I am exhausted. Nevertheless, I managed to get some work done. New Forest and Castle Tilesets Over the past m... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #23 - v0.16 - Combo, Boss and More!
  February 06, 2022 by Bright Flask#samurai, #2d

  For this month I managed to get around 84 hours into the project. I'm working with a new artist to get the next areas done and then some enemies. UI Improvements Quite a few of my UI was reworked. It... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #22 - v0.15 - Target Content and More Features
  January 02, 2022 by Bright Flask#samurai, #ui, #game-design, #top-down

  This month was quite busy. I'm super happy with how much progress I made. I usually track the time I spend on the project. For this month I spent almost 60hours on it. I only work on weekends and days... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #21 - v0.14 - Skill System
  November 29, 2021 by Bright Flask#devlog, #debugger, #skills, #gd, #gdd, #design, #game design, #skill

  Skill System For this month, I continued working on the skills. I finished the basic UI to select the skills before the stage. Two skills are implemented, and I'm saving the selection you made. As you... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #20 - v0.13 - Slow Progress
  October 31, 2021 by Bright Flask#gamedev, #unity, #samurai

  So, last month I wasn't able to work on the game. I was in an Airbnb and moving to a new house. Things were a little chaotic. Even upon arriving at the house, it took about a week or so to get the bas... Continue reading
• Devlog #19 - v0.12 - Be brave and delete
  August 29, 2021 by Bright Flask#samurai, #game, #madewithunity, #2d

  Moving Countries The past month has been hard. I'm moving to a different country. With covid and lots of things to solve in between. I made sure to spare some time to work on the game. I made the smar... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #18 - v0.11 - Cleanups
  July 31, 2021 by Bright Flask#2d, #action, #samurai

  Code Organization At the beginning of this month, I focused on removing stuff that wasn't being used. I had a social system that I had used in a previous game for mobile for example. Just isn't necess... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #17 - v0.10 - New UI and Improvements
  July 03, 2021 by Bright Flask#samurai, #blood, #action

  I had a bit less time this month. Almost half the time to be honest, but I was able to make progress on the game. Like the months before there was a lot of code being tossed out. Trying to make the co... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #16 - v0.9 - New HUD and Improved Archer
  May 29, 2021 by Bright Flask#yurei, #samurai, #gameplay, #hud

  This month was good. I focused on removing a lot of "clutter" code. There were a lot of unused classes, some methods lying around as well. I don't want to rework stuff, but if I see something that's n... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #15 - v0.8 - Arena Mode
  April 25, 2021 by Bright Flask#samurai, #unity, #action, #arcade

  This new build lets you play through the first levels of the Arena mode. The main mode where you can challenge yourself in different stages built to crush you. Give it a shot :)... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #14 - Game Plan
  October 11, 2020 by Bright Flask#unity, #samurai, #arcade, #action game

  For the past two months, I have not been able to continue work on the game. I'm back this weekend and plan to continue. I've decided to reduce the scope of the game. I was aiming for something close t... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #13 - Charged Dash Attack
  July 25, 2020 by Bright Flask

  1

  #fsm, #unity, #samurai

  FSM Rework I've spent quite some time reworking the FSM system I was using. I was using one with Scriptable Objects which gave me some nice flexibility. I could set up behaviors with a nice interface... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #12 - v0.7 - Pathfinding
  June 29, 2020 by Bright Flask#pathfinding, #screenshake, #samurai

  Pathfinding The first major update of this version is the addition of a pathfinding system. The AI I had was simple. Enemies would move x,y in your direction. I thought it was going to be a headache o... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #11 - v0.6 - Archer Enemy
  June 17, 2020 by Bright Flask#2d, #action, #samurai

  Archer The archer is finally integrated with all animations. It's nice having it match the level and the samurai. Once you add the animations you start rethinking the logical states that you have. Sin... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #10 - v0.5 - Breakable objects
  June 08, 2020 by Bright Flask#2d, #action, #combat, #samurai

  Breakable Objects Finally got around to adding breakable objects into the game. I was a bit hesitant to add it because of the enemy AI. The movement is quite simple now. I will add pathfinding in the... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #9 - v0.4 - Combat Improvements
  June 01, 2020 by Bright Flask

  The enemy archer is moving along. I like how it is turning out and I can't wait to put him into the game. In this version, I focused on code cleanup. Especially in the Shop and State Machine code I h... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #8 - v0.3 - Enemy Waves and Loot
  May 25, 2020 by Bright Flask#2d, #action, #samurai

  Yurei - 0.3.0 Work on the archer enemy has been slow. The logic is working fine for quite some time but the art is moving slow. For this version I focused on improving the tutorial area in the beginni... Continue reading
• Devlog #7 - v0.2 - Unique Tiles
  May 24, 2020 by Bright Flask#unity, #samurai, #2d, #action

  Yurei - 0.2.0 Over the last two months, I was able to rework and clean up most of the game. I've been trying to remove as much unnecessary stuff as possible and focus on the essentials. It's been tou... Continue reading
• Devlog #6 - v0.1 - First public version
  March 22, 2020 by Bright Flask#combat, #action, #samurai

  Yurei v0.1.1 is out! This first public version focuses on combat. Please feel free to try it out and comment what you liked and disliked... Continue reading
• Devlog #5 - Main Character Art
  January 20, 2019 by Bright Flask#samurai

  It's a been a while since I've posted on Itch. For the past month or so the major update has been all visual. I've been working with an awesome artist and he's super fast. The dynamic is amazing and w... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #4 - Timelapse #3
  December 17, 2018 by Bright Flask#feature updates, #new art

  Mostly working on item use and integrating some of the art (finally). I usually only have time during the weekends so progress has been slow. Thankfully I found a new artist now and that should speed... Continue reading
• Devlog #3 - Items
  November 27, 2018 by Bright Flask#gamedev, #dev log, #madewithunity, #top-down, #unity, #samurai, #japan

  For the past couple of weeks, I've been focusing on quite a few things. The biggest new addition is probably the fact that now you can use items. The player can now hold up to three items and use them... Continue reading

  
• Devlog #2 - Shop And Characters
  November 02, 2018 by Bright Flask#madewithunity, #unity, #top-down, #zelda-like, #timelapse, #dev timelapse, #gamedev

  Hey guys, how is it going? I have been working on the shop menu and balancing the different types of characters the game will have. This next dev timelapse is a full day's work in just one minute... Continue reading
• Devlog #1 - The Ghost Samurai
  September 30, 2018 by Bright Flask

  So, I've been working on this game for a couple of months. It's starting to shape up and art will come in soon. If you like Samurais and top-down action game, be sure to check it out here or on Twitte... Continue reading